SOCIAL VISION IN KAMALA MARKANDAYS’S
NECTAR IN A SIEVE
Pooja
Research Scholar Department English Gurukul kangari University, Uttrakhand.
ABSTRACT
Kamala Markandaya has been acclaimed a major contemporary India-English novelist. She was born in 1924
in the famous Purnia family of Mysore. She was given National Association of Independent award in 1967, and
Asian prize in 1947. Her important work include Nector in a Sieve, Some Inner Fury(1955), A Silence of
Desire(1960), Possession(1963), and A Hand Full Rice(1966). Kamala Markandaya is essentially a novelist of
social vision and the main motifs of her novels are invariably inspired by her social vision. As a result of her
social vision, her characters, both major and minor, honestly and dishonestly, tradition and modernity, the ideal
and the actual, and love and hatred. Kamala Markanday, like Mulk Raj Anand, Bhabani Bhattacharya,
Nayantara Sehgal others, to an old generation that has experienced the political and
social traumas
engendered by foreign rule. Markanday’s Nector in a Sieve is the autobiography of Rukmani. The social
background is provides by a village in transition, and the conflict and tensions are caused by the intrusion of
modern industry. This novel is the exposure and censure of social evils like poverty, starvation, suffering,
superstition, corruption and exploiter groups as capitalists, money leaders and landlords. The novel has been
sub-titled A Novel of Rural India which obviously shows novelist’s aim to depict the life poverty, hunger and
suffering lived by the poor tenant-farmers in countless Indian Villages. The real power of Nectar In A Sieve
lives in its realistic portrayal of a village which is symbolic of rural India. This novel deals with the tragic
turmoils caused by socio-economic factors in the life of Rukmani, the narrator-heroine. This novel is perhaps
the first Indian novel in English which sincere attempt has been made to project a realistic picture or rural
India in all its shade and details – famine, drought, excessive rain, struggle for survival, eviction, superstition,
hunger and starvation.
Keywords: Expatriate Experience, Search for Identity, Hybridity.
I. INTRODUCTION
Literature is a product of society and writers are responsible for reflecting as accurately and honestly as possible
the ethos and temperament of the community that their writing seeks to represent. It cannot be imagined as a
separate entity having no direct or indirect relation with society. The writer is a man speaking to men, about men
and their affairs. His life is influenced by the conditions of the age in which he is born and brought up and in
which he works and creates. A writer‘s genius up and in which he works and creates. A writer‘s genius is
sharpened by his intellectual and cultural milieu and the socio-economic forces that intract with him. Thus
literature is direct representation of the society and comes into existence through the medium of creator‘s
imagination. It offers the social content. So literature can be understood and appreciated in its social context
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only. This context may be called the external reference which is necessary for full interpretation and evolution
of any literary text. Hence to think of literature as the mirror of an age is misnomer, as the generalization raises
some pertinent questions as for instances, whether the fictional characters and situations are only true for a
particular historical period or for all ages. It obliterates all considerations of the writer and his intentions as he
merely does not attempt to just describe society nor vividly present an image of it, but to create a story
illustrating through it.
Society is not just a flesh and bones structure comprising social institutions. It is a moderating influence,
regulating the behavior of an individual by the imposition of certain norms and standards of behavior that are
generally accepted as the right ways of acting and judging. Great literature is invested with real meaning
because of its search for authentic values, the values of genuine human community in which needs, aspirations
and desires are mediated through social interaction. Novel is probably the most direct representation of the life.
Indian fiction in English has also held a mirror up to Indian social life and down the decades it has also explored
the varied facets of Indian society. The gruesome poverty, Independence struggle, trauma of partition, social
change, crisis of identity, emerging experiences of alienation and anarchy – all these have figured on the screen
of Indian novel.
Kamala Markandaya has been acclaimed a major contemporary indo-
English novelist.
She was born in 1924 in the famous Purniya family of Mysore. She has an elder sister Lalitha and two brothers.
Her father was in Government
service as an employee in the Railways. Her father‘s choice of
profession was indirectly responsible for Markandaya‘s flowering into a creative writer because his unlimited
travel facilities allowed her the luxury of vacationing in various Indian locales throughout her growing years. As
a result of her father‘s frequent transfers to locations around India, Markandaya‘s own education was
―intermittent and casual‖. Much of her early schooling was obtained in Coimbatore in South India where the
family lived for at least eight years (between 1931-39) until Markandaya was fifteen. In 1940, she entered the
University of Madras intending to take a degree in History. But her increasingly strong interest in writing came
in the way of obtaining a degree. Abandoning her academic studies before earning her undergraduate degree,
she joined a small weekly paper as a journalist. This paper, unfortunately, closed down for financial reasons.
The war was on and these were crucial years in Anglo-Indian relations. Markandaya lives for a time in a South
Indian village. This phase of her life is referred as the period of her experiments in rural living. In this phase,
Markandaya experienced the political and social traumas engendered by foreign rule. R.S. Singh rightly says :
―Her sense of involvement in social life of India, her keen observations combined with critical acumen, and the
feminine sensibility brought her international fame with the very first novel : Nectar in a Sieve.‖9
Markandaya went to England in 1948 to settle there after her marriage with Mr. Edward John Taylor. Now,
Kamala Markandaya lives a very private life in Dulwich, in central London. She was given National Association
of Independent Award (U.S.A) in 1967, and Asian Prize in 1947. She continues to write under her maiden name
though after her marriage she in Purnai Taylor. To data she has written ten novels. Her novels are Nectar in a
Sieve (1954), Some Inner Fury (1955), A Silence of Desire (1960), Possession (1963), A Handful Rice (1966),
The Coffer Dams (1969), The Nowhere Man (1972), Two Virgins (1973), The Golden Honey Comb (1977) and
Pleasure city (1980).
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Kamala Markandaya is essentially a novelist of social vision and the main motifs of her novels are invariably
inspired by her social vision. As a result of her social vision, her characters, both major and minor are described
torn by a conflict between good and evil, honestly and dishonestly, tradition and modernity, faith and reason, the
ideal and the actual, and love and hatred. Markandaya, like Mulk Raj Anand, Bhabani Bhattacharya, Nayantara
Sehgal and others, belongs to an old generation that has experienced the political and social traumas engendered
by foreign rule. Markandaya‘s novels tell a personal story, but the story is told against a vast social background,
and we are also told of the conflicts and tensions which cause suffering and tragedy. For example, Nectar in a
Sieve is the autobiography of Rukmani, the social background is provide buy a village in transition, and the
conflict and tensions are caused by the intrusion of modern industry. Rukmani being to narrate the story of
sorrows and suffering of the rural people with the urgency and veracity of her actual experiences and ends after
she has silently learnt the lesson for her remaining life. Kamla Markanday‘s novels contain a significant
quantum of social vision as they highlight the traditional status of women in a male dominated society. Her
treatment of social life is inclusive and comprehensive. That the social content remains a constant theme in
Anita Desai‘s novels is also revealed through the various techniques a she employee. Nectar in a Sieve (1954) is
the very first and successful novel of Kamala Markandaya. With its publication, she achieved immediate
international recognition and success. The novel is the exposure and censure of social evils like poverty,
starvation, suffering, superstition, corruption and parasitism of such exploiter groups as capitalists, moneyleaders and landlords. The novel has been sub-titled A Novel of Rural India which obviously shows novelist ‗s
aim to depict the life of poverty, hunger and suffering lived by the poor tenant-farmers in countless Indian
villages. The real power of Nectar in a Sieve lies in its realistic portrayal of a village which is symbolic or rural
India. Rochelle Almeida remarks:
Nectar in a Sieve exposed the cruel lot of typical Indian peasant who suffers silently – a victim of the vagaries of
nature, of the feudal system of zamindari, of the forces of technological progress which dislodge him from his
native soil and force him to relocate an alien environment.
Markandaya shows how the hostility of nature and rapid industrialization lend farmer‘s family to hunger and
poverty. She does not glorify poverty or see it as an uplifting human experience. It is depicted realistically as an
evil force, which degrades and dehumanizes. The flow of life in rural India is such that fear, hunger and despair
are the constant companions of the peasant. The conditions are much worse in villages which stand at the
periphery of urban civilization. Nectar in a Sieve deals with the tragic turmoils caused by socio-economic
factors in the life or Rukmani, the narrator-heroine. It is a realistic chronicle of Rukmani‘s life in particular and
the sufferings of peasants in colonial India in general. When the harvest or Rukmani and Nathan fails owing to
natural calamities, the farmers face not only starvation but also miserable poverty that forces them to sell their
small possession in order to pay the rent. Rukmani and her husband, Nathan, are forcibly dispossessed of their
land as a result of rapid industrialization. Markandaya lived in South Indian villages and shared the suffering of
the villagers as an independent observer. This peculiar experience enabled her to portray authentically the real
picture of sufferings, hunger and poverty of rural Indian society in Nectar in a Sieve. K.R. Srinivarsa lynger
rightly says:
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Markandaya takes use to the heart of a South Indian-or Tamil and – village where life has apparently not change
or a thousand years. Now industry and modern technology invade the village in the shape of tannery and from
this impact sinister consequences issue.
Various sections of rural society and various village occupations are presented through the characters. The
change comes blasting in this life of Rukmani and Nathan, in the form of tannery, a symbol of industrialization,
in the form of flood and drought. The octopus of hunger raises its ugly head and it envelops the peace and joy of
their life. One by one her sons join tannery. The encroachment of industry causes the decay of natural beauty,
creates havoc in the village economy and brings in social degradation too. Rukmani‘s husband likes to see the
sons beside him, to teach them the ways of earth, how to sow seed, the transplant and reap. He now helplessly
watches his sons getting employed in the tannery. In Nathan‘s helplessness we find the expression the traditional
Indian folk caught in the inevitable sweep of urbanization and industry. Nectar in a Sieve is a tremendous story
of the sons of soil who live from hand to mouth on what their small tenant holdings produce in South India. The
story is told in the first person by Rukmani, a plain looking woman who was married to a farmer, Nathan. After
marriage, she could not get Children and therefore she consulted the English doctor, Kenny. Then she got her
first daughter, Ira. After this her next son was born. His name was Arjun. Later on she bore five sons Thambi,
Murugan Raja, Selvam and Kuti. As more Children came, Nathan and Rukmani began to find it difficult to
afford necessities of life. Rukmani at last got Ira married to a young man. The wedding ceremony has been
beautifully described by the novelist as it happens in Indian society. Then the trouble of this couple started.
There was heavy rainfall for eight days and nights and their fields were flooded. They had to pay heavily to the
village shop-keeper for the little rice they wanted. At last when the fields were drained of their water, they
caught fish. When Rukmani‘s Son Kuti was born, Ira looked after him as if he were his own son. By this time
there was labour trouble in the tannery. There was a strike for a week, but if failed Arjun and Thambi who were
the leaders of the workers lost their jobs. Then their two boys went to Ceylon to work in the tea-plantation much
against the wishes of the parents. Murugan the third boy got a job in a city and went away. Thus Rukmani‘s
family started disintegrating. The famine destroyed whatever was left. Nathan sold everything because he had to
pay half the dues of the Zamindar. The much awaited rain came but now it was of no use. Rukmani says:
Then, after the heat and endured for days and days, and our hopes had shriveled with the paddy- too late to do
any good- then we saw the storm clouds gathering, and before long the rain came lashing down, making up in
fury for the long drought and giving the grateful land as much as it could stuck and more. But in us there was
nothing left no joy, no call for joy. It had come too late (p.78)
Paddy was not yet ripe in the field and Kuti was dying of hunger. So Ira became a woman of street and earned
money by selling her body. Even then Kuti died. Then Ira gave birth to her illegal son. They called him
Sacrabnil and Selvam, the younger son, liked this boy. Kenny was building a hospital and he trained Selvam to
be his assistant. But the hospital took eight years to be ready; till then Selvam and his parents had to remain
poor. The tannery people bought up the land which Nathan tilled. So Nathan and Rukmani went to city where
their son Murugan was living with his wife. At night all their belongings and money were stolen. They were,
thus helpless. When they reached at last Murugan‘s house in the Collector‘s bunglow, they found his wife in
poor condition. Murugan had gone away two years back and she was working and trying to keep the children
alive. They left her there. Then they settle down in the temple where free food was given every night. With the
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help of Puli, the leprous boy, they got work in a stone quarry. Their main aim was to collect ten rupees, and
return to their village. By the time that amount was collected, Nathan died of fever and Rukmani and Puli
returned to the village and to Selvam and Ira. Thus it becomes clear that in Nectar in a Sieve, Kamala
Markandaya is concerned with socio-economic plights of rural Indians. A literary work involves interaction
between writer and the social milieu. Although it is difficult to pinpoint the precise nature of interaction the
relations between literature and society are reciprocal. Kamala Markandaya‘s Nectar in a Sieve is distinctly
sociological in focus. The novel is a study of Indian rural life, and depicts the life of desolation and starvation
led by people, Says Madhusudan Prasad: ―Nectar in a Sieve is an epic of Indian life at the grassroots, a full view
of village world where peasants grow and live, suffer and endure and emerged more dignified, more human in
their elements with their tattered rags, their dying moons human in their elements with their tattered rags, their
dying moons and obstinate clinging to the soil like the stump withered all over but its roots delved in the earth‘‘.
Rukmani and Nathan are also symbols of teeming millions archetypal figures, like Adam and Eve. Social life in
India bristles with problems-vagaries and varieties. Nectar in a Sieve, recalls Premchand‘s Godan. Like Godan,
it presents the saga of Indian life at the grassroot. The main focus of Markandaya‘s novel is hunger and the
consequent human debasement. Under desperate conditions, as Arjun, Rukmani‘s eldest son, says, ―The
important thing is to eat‖ (p.87). However the rains having failed, Rukmani, Nathan and their children starve
and drift apart:
Thereafter we fed on whatever we could find: the soft ripe fruit of the prickly pear: a sweet potato or two,
blackened and half rotten, thrown away by some more prosperous hand; sometimes a crab that Nathan managed
to catch near the river--- and for every edible plant or root there was struggle—a desperate competition that
made enemies of friends and put and end to humanity (p.87).
In Nectar in a Sieve Kamala Markandaya bring out the fact that it is hunger which leads ultimately to
degradation. It is irony of fate that people condemn a person for his bad acts without analyzing the
circumstances responsible for doing so. The so called leaders of out society condemn immorality without trying
to know the reality. But Markandaya posses a question to reader, ―if immorality is due to poverty and hunger,
what shall we call it?‖ it is poverty that drives Kunthi to prostitution and later on, she even blackmails Rukmani
and Nathan. Ira is forced to adopt prostitution in her desperate attempt to save the dying child brother. The
novelist brings out the fact that it is not nature alone but man also is responsible for man‘s hunger. Rukmani and
Nathan have to work as stone-breakers to cash their bread. They have to face disgrace when their childless
daughter, Ira, is rejected by her husband. Emotionally tired and physically impoverished Nathan accepts this
disgrace as a part of their lot. Old Granny dies of starvation. Make the bitter reality of her life:
They found her body on the path that led to the wall, an empty mud-pot besides her and the gunny-sacking tied
around her waist. She had died of starvation (p.123)
In the village itself life is no longer friendly, for new shops run by new men have mushroomed overnight,
pushing the old establishments out. Once a sleepy village was now becoming a bustling town, with faces and
languages from the many parts of Hindustan. Nevertheless, Rukmani is content because her family is intact. Joy
and harmony soon begin to crumble, not from the direction of the tannery, but from a different though familiar
quarter: the seasons Rukmani records:
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It was as if nothing had ever been but rain, and the water pitilessly found every hole in the thatched roof to come
in dripping into the already damp floor…. while the water rose and the tender green of the paddy field sank and
was lost
kamala Markandaya brings out the fact that the Indian people‘s faith in religion and passive resignation to fate
enable them to fact the hardships of life boldly without blaming anyone. It gives them a sort of mental strength
and protects them from the danger of tension and conflict which afflicts the people of the west. However, it does
not mean that Kamala Markandaya advocates the idea of fatalism. Rather she presents the idea of fatalism
realistically to depict the innocence of the people of the East. It is strange that woman in Indian society does not
call her husband by his given first name. She gives some explanations about the name of her husband. Rukmani
says:
I will call him Nathan, for that was his name, although in all the years of our marriage I never called him that,
for it is not meet for a woman to address her husband except as husband (p.4)
What ultimately makes Nectar in a Sieve a great work of art is that it is result not of personal suffering of the
author but of the minute observation of acute suffering ―In its particular theme of the tragic plight of Rukmani
and her family, there is universality of love, loyalty and suffering that will appeal to readers all over the world‖
Nathan and Rukamni are the representatives of thousands of uprooted peasants under the pressure of industrial
economy and the vagaries of nature. Rukmani‘s village is indeed symbolic of the entire rural India. Nectar in a
Sieve shows that in the traditional Hindu society a woman‘s position as a daughter-in-law, wife and mother and
later grandmother is pre-planned for her, and she has only to live with in given frame work to carve out a
respectable position for herself. As a wife Rukmani, a plain looking woman, is obviously satisfied with her
marital life with Nathan. She bears and rears their children, cooks for them and sees to it that things at home are
as perfect as they can be. As a partner she partakes of all his sufferings and his out of door hardships. For herself
she wants nothing. The Indian philosophy of self negation and passive acceptance of fate is in her blood. She
needs no book to learn it. Woman find her utmost fulfillment in motherhood and that is her greatest achievement
too. The embodiment of such a mother figure is found in Rukmani. The single force that unites the whole
structure of the novel is the character of the narrator, Rukmani. She is not simply a viilage girl, a loving and
devoted wife and a sacrificing mother or Indian society. She has transcended there limited physical identities to
represent the universal mother figure. Markandaya has not confined Rukmani to any particular class, creed, or
convention. She is conceived as the encompassing, enduring devoted, sacrificing suffering, loving and forgiving
mother figure.
In the end, we can say that Kamala Markandaya‘s Nectar in a Sieve deals with the life of poverty, hunger and
starvations, lived by the poor tenant-farmers in countless Indian villages. Markandaya‘ is the literature of
disapproval of existing injustice, social inequalities, exploitation, cruelty, irrational attitudes, disintegration of
the individual, erosion of social value, cross culture of capitalism, colonial imperialism and so on. The novel is
perhaps the first Indian novel in English which sincere attempt has been made to project a realistic picture of
rural India in all its shade and details – famine, drought, excessive rain, struggle for survival, eviction,
superstition, hunger and starvation.
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REFERENCES
1.
Rochelle Almeida, Originality and Imitation: Indianness in The Novels of Kamala Markandaya, (Jaipur: Rawat
Publication, 2000) 114.
2.
K.R. Srinivasa lyenger, Indian Writing in English, (New Delhi: Sterling Publishers, 2001) 438.
3.
Madhusudan Prasad, Perspectives on Kamala Markandaya, (Ghaziabad: Vimal Prakashan, 1984)98-99.
4.
Margaret Joseph P., Kamala Markandaya (New Delhi: Arnold Heinemann, 1980)217---218.
5.
A.V. Krishana Rao, The Indo-Inglian Novel and Changing Traditon, (Mysore : Rao and Rahgavan, 1972) 2016.
6.
Rakha Jha, The Novels of Kamala Markandaya and Ruth Jhabvala: A Study in East-West Encounter, (New
Delhi: Prestige Books, 1990) 90.
7.
K. Venkata Readdy, Major Indian Novelists (New Delhi: Prestige Books, 1990) 84.
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